My Brother's Famous Bottom Makes a Splash!

by Jeremy Strong

  We sat down on the beach. Dad came back and things quietened down. Mum handed me a postcard and said I should write to Granny and Lancelot, so I did.

  5. Three Lobsters and a Bumpy Problem

  When we went down for breakfast this morning the whole room fell silent as all the other guests stopped eating and stared at us. Some of them grinned. One woman winked at me! (Or maybe she was winking at Dad.)

  Then they all went back to their breakfast eating, all except the Grubnoses, who looked as if they’d had a bath in a giant tub of tomato soup, because they had spent far too much time in the sun the day before. Mrs Grubnose slowly looked around the room and then spoke to her husband and son in a voice loud enough to reach the boats in the harbour.

  ‘Did you hear about that silly, silly man who went to sea on his paddleboard and had to be rescued? A paddleboard! Can you imagine doing anything so stupid? It’s unbelievable how brainless some people can be. If he were my husband I think I’d have to get a divorce at once!’

  It was so embarrassing. Dad flushed scarlet and was trying to hide behind his beard, but Mum didn’t seem to mind. She lifted her chin and spoke to Dad in a voice even louder than Mrs Grubnose’s.

  ‘Darling, did you see that extraordinary family who lay in the sun all day yesterday? Can you imagine anything so stupid? Now they are so red they look like three boiled lobsters!’

  A ripple of laughter ran round the room while the three lobsters turned even redder than their sunburn and shrivelled in their seats.

  ‘Lying in the sun, all day,’ Mum went on. ‘You’d think they’d be intelligent enough to realize how dangerous that can be. Oh, well, let’s hope they’ve got a good stock of after-sun lotion to put on. They’ll probably need to bath in it. Now then, what shall we do today? I think we should all get on the paddleboard and go out to sea together. I’m sure that with five of us paddling we can get to that island. Come on!’

  And with that Mum got up from the table and we followed her out. Behind us, several people clapped. I even heard someone shout, ‘Encore!’

  Outside the breakfast room I hurried after Mum. I couldn’t believe what she’d said. ‘Are we really going on the paddleboard? Five of us? Won’t it sink?’

  Mum chuckled. ‘Of course we’re not, Nicholas. I only said all that to annoy the Grubnoses. There is no way you will get me on a paddleboard, surfboard, skateboard or ironing board for that matter!’

  Dad put one arm around Mum’s shoulders and hugged her. ‘That was wonderful. You really nobbled the Grubnoses. I shan’t be able to stop thinking of them as lobsters now.’

  ‘Yes, well, don’t get too excited, Ron. You can stop being Captain Disaster, please. Let’s do something a bit quieter today. Maybe we can go and look at one of the nearby ruins.’

  ‘What sort of ruins?’ I asked. It didn’t sound very interesting to me.

  ‘Your mother means old buildings,’ muttered Dad, pulling his I-will-be-bored face.

  ‘They’re much more than old buildings,’ Mum explained. ‘They were small cities three thousand years ago. Irfan was telling me about them. The Ancient Greeks were here. The Romans were here and before either of them the Lycians were here, and they were the first to build the cities. Irfan says we’ll see wildlife too – tortoises and lizards.’

  ‘Lizards!’ repeated Tomato.

  ‘Dinosaurs!’ shouted Cheese. ‘Aaaargh!’ He pretended to be scared.

  ‘I didn’t say dinosaurs at all. I said lizards,’ Mum corrected him. Cheese stopped running round her in circles, looked up, shouted ‘Dinosaurs!’ again and carried on running.

  Dad nodded seriously. ‘I’m with Cheese on this one. I’ll be looking for dinosaurs. How about you, Nicholas?’

  ‘Give me dinosaurs every time.’ I grinned.

  Mum shrugged. ‘Boys will be boys,’ she sighed. ‘Now go and change your shoes so we can go out. Meet back here in five minutes.’

  I was about to follow Cheese and Tomato up to our room when Irfan beckoned us over. ‘Come see,’ he whispered. We followed him towards the rear of the hotel. There was an open cupboard with lots of shelves stacked with bedding and towels, ready to use.

  Irfan pointed to the bottom shelf. Nestled deep inside, so that you had to bend down to see them, were three kittens, curled up together and fast asleep.

  ‘Oh!’ whispered Tomato. ‘They are beautiful.’

  ‘Do they belong to the hotel?’ I asked. Irfan shook his head.

  ‘No home. Strays. I found them outside and brought them in here.’

  ‘I want them,’ said Tomato. Of course she did!

  ‘I want them,’ echoed Cheese, and of course he did too. So did I. They were so cute.

  Irfan smiled. ‘They’ll be OK here. I shall keep an eye on them.’

  I called to the twins. ‘Come on. We’ve got to change our shoes. Mum will be fretting.’

  We raced upstairs.

  The place we went to was called Letoon and it used to be a temple but had got flooded. There were some dusty mosaics and lots of broken pillars sticking out of a big pond. There was hardly anyone there. We just about had the place to ourselves.

  It was very beautiful and the pond bit was full of turtles. They sunbathed on rocks and the stumps of pillars. When you went near they would dive into the water and vanish.

  Every now and then there’d be a tremendous noise and we’d hunt around, certain that there were some big birds among the reeds making all the fuss. You will never guess what it was. Tiny frogs! They were about the size of a small cupcake, but what a racket!

  We also saw two kingfishers, flashing up and down, going from one fishing spot to another, like tiny blue-and-orange fairy-spears darting through the air.

  ‘Lizard!’ Mum suddenly shouted, pointing across to a fallen pillar. It was a big one, almost half a metre long, posing on the pillar like some prehistoric monster.

  ‘Dinosaur!’ cried Cheese. ‘Run, Mummy! Run, Nick! Run, Daddy!’

  ‘What about Tomato?’ I asked.

  Cheese laughed. ‘Dinosaur can eat Tomato!’

  ‘That’s not very nice, you little imp,’ said Mum. ‘Just let me catch you and I’ll feed you to the dinosaur!’

  We had a brilliant time, racing around and watching the animals. We saw three tortoises too, slowly wandering about. I love tortoises. They always look busy, but you never actually see them doing anything. It’s as if their job is to plod about, like building inspectors checking on everything, stomping round and round, making notes to themselves.

  ‘Hmmm, that rock looks all right. And that bush is growing nicely. Oooh, I don’t like this lump of log across the path. I can’t climb over that. I shall have to get the council to come and remove it.’

  We spent half the day at Letoon and then went back to the hotel to get ready for supper. In our room Tomato pulled at my T-shirt.

  ‘What?’ I asked. She beckoned me down to her height and whispered in my ear.

  ‘I’ve got a secret, Nicky,’ she said.

  ‘Really? Is it exciting? Do you want to tell me?’

  ‘Want to show you,’ Tomato said, pulling at my T-shirt again. ‘Come on.’

  Tomato took me into the bathroom. ‘Look.’

  I looked. In the bath there was a tortoise, clumsily plodding up and down, presumably wondering how on earth it was going to get out.

  ‘But I need a plug to put in the bath,’ Tomato said. ‘Then I can put water in for it to swim.’

  ‘Ah, well, this tortoise doesn’t need a plug.’

  ‘No? Why?’

  ‘Because tortoises can’t swim,’ I told her.

  ‘Yes! Yes! At The Toon, lots of tortoises in the water swimming.’

  ‘The ones we saw swimming at Letoon weren’t tortoises. They look like tortoises but they are turtles. Turtles can swim. Tortoises can’t swim.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tomato looked at the tortoise in the bath and I could tell she was thinking. ‘I could teach it to swim,’ she suggested, hopefully.
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br />   ‘I don’t think so. You see, they haven’t got the right kind of feet. Turtles can swim because they have flippers for feet.’

  ‘We can swim and we don’t have flippers,’ Tomato argued and I could see her logic.

  ‘I know, but we have long legs and long arms to help us. Tortoises have very short legs.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Tomato grunted, and luckily she couldn’t think how to reply.

  I went on: ‘Anyway, the thing is, we can’t keep a tortoise in the bath.’

  ‘But I’m going to take it home!’

  ‘You can’t. This is a wild tortoise and it has to stay in this country.’

  ‘But Bumpy needs to be looked after!’ ‘Bumpy?’ I repeated.

  ‘That’s his name. He’s called Bumpy and he’s my tortoise and he knows my name and I’m taking him home.’

  Tears were filling Tomato’s eyes. I had to make a decision and I decided to play for time.

  ‘Don’t cry. Listen, we’ll keep Bumpy here while I think of what we can do, all right? Maybe we can find some food for him. We need green leaves. I’ll try and find some.’

  Tomato nodded. She fetched her teddy and popped it in the bath with the tortoise. ‘That’s so Bumpy has someone to talk to,’ Tomato explained.

  I smiled. All I had to do now was think of a solution to the Bumpy Problem.

  6. Belly Dancing in the Rain

  I was still thinking about Bumpy when Dad put his beardy head round the door and grinned at us.

  ‘Guess what? It’s karaoke night this evening.’

  I groaned. I am not a karaoke fan. Unfortunately Dad loves it because he likes singing. He’s always singing. Sometimes he even makes up his own songs, or rather he makes up the words. ‘Twinkle, twinkle, Mr Tugg – you look like a big, bald bug. Show your face and if you do, I shall squash you under my shoe.’ That’s a typical Dad song. (Mr Tugg is our Martian nightmare neighbour at home.)

  ‘I shall serenade everyone in the hotel tonight,’ crowed Dad. ‘La la la LAAAAH!’

  ‘I think I might stay in bed with a pillow over my head,’ I told him.

  ‘Nick! That’s poetry! I could set it to music!’ And he started singing again. ‘I think I might stay in beeed, with a pillow over my heeeead! OK, I know you don’t like singing but it’s not just karaoke night, there will also be – BELLY DANCING!’

  Dad’s eyes were wide with excitement and he began what he obviously thought was a belly dance. In fact it looked more like he had terrible pains in his stomach.

  Double groan. Belly dancing and karaoke.

  ‘Oh, cheer up!’ said Dad. ‘All you have to do is come down and watch.’

  Cheese had pulled up his T-shirt and was staring down at his rather round belly. He kept pulling strange faces and plucked at my arm.

  ‘I can’t make my belly dance,’ he complained.

  ‘Neither can Dad,’ I pointed out. ‘Anyhow, I think it’s women who usually do belly dancing.’ (How wrong I was – as I discovered later!)

  After that we got changed before we went down to supper. I had left my camera in the room and I went back for it. When I came back out I almost bumped into the Grubnoses. Mr and Mrs went striding past me, noses in the air, but Mason hung back a little. I didn’t want to speak to him but he was obviously waiting for me, half blocking the corridor.

  ‘Seen my new trainers?’ boasted Mason. ‘Nikes. Latest model. Cost three hundred quid.’

  Oh, really? No trainers cost that much! Not even when they are fluorescent orange, as Mason’s were.

  ‘Had to leave mine at home,’ I said. ‘Dad wouldn’t let me bring them in case they got stolen. Mine cost three hundred quid – and 50p.’

  Mason gave me a furious scowl. I gave him what I hoped was a charming smile.

  ‘Your parents are pathetic,’ he hissed at me. ‘Your dad thinks he’s funny and your mum smells.’

  ‘Of roses,’ I hastily added.

  ‘No, stupid, she smells of a thousand-year-old toilet.’

  ‘People didn’t have toilets a thousand years ago. Not proper ones.’

  ‘Think you’re clever, don’t you?’ sneered Mason.

  ‘Actually, according to my teacher I’m a little bit above average. How about you?’

  Mason didn’t bother to answer. ‘If you sing tonight I’m going to throw tomatoes at you. I’m saving all my tomatoes from supper and I shall throw them at the whole lot of you, and your smelly mum and your smelly dad and those stupid smelly twins. So there.’

  And he went stumping off after his parents. Why are some people like that? I mean, what’s the point? The hotel had organized a fun evening and Mason wanted to ruin it. Why? Don’t ask me.

  There was a real feeling of excitement when I got to the dining room. A small space had been left in one corner and there was a little platform and a microphone for anyone who wanted to sing and enough space for a belly dancer or two.

  After we had eaten, the karaoke began. Some of the singers were actually quite good, but others were so bad you wanted to run from the room and hide your ears in the pool outside. Dad sang ‘I Did It My Way’ and pulled funny faces and at the end he tried to sing the last verse standing on his head. I knew Dad was thinking that was hilariously funny because, of course, he was singing it his way. Unfortunately he just looked rather daft because he kept falling over. A few people saw the funny side of it.

  Mr Grubnose suddenly pushed back his chair and strode to the stage, practically pushing my dad out of the way so that he could have a go. Guess what he sang. ‘Rule Britannia’! He did! He stood there and bellowed out ‘Rule Britannia’. It was so awful and when he finished the audience kindly gave him a polite clap, while Mrs Grubnose got to her feet and shouted ‘Hurrah! Encore!’ over and over again.

  Luckily the belly dancer arrived and instantly got everyone’s attention. She was a rather plump lady and she was wearing an extraordinary version of a bikini that had veils of cloth hanging from it and was covered with sequins and sparkling jewels.

  It turned out that it wasn’t just her belly that was dancing, she also made her thighs and top half and shoulders dance too. It seemed as if she could make almost any part of her body sort of shiver and shake. It was amazingly clever and all the jewels and sequins shone and glittered as if she was wearing stars all over her.

  I saw Irfan make his way to the stage and he began to dance beside her, doing the same thing. He made his shoulders and chest quiver and then his belly and then the top half of his legs. The audience were all shouting encouragement and got to their feet and cheered as the music got louder and faster and the dance moves quickened and got more and more exciting.

  I was taking photos and Mum was videoing the whole thing. She moved closer to the stage and as she passed the Grubnoses’ table she seemed to trip. All of a sudden Mum was hurtling towards the two dancers. She crashed into Irfan, who staggered back against the wall, arms waving like windmills as he fell over. Mum did much the same thing, and the next moment the fire alarm went off. The alarm was deafening and seconds later the sprinklers in the ceiling began to shower everyone with water. It was a deluge!

  Panic! Chaos! People were screaming and rushing about in all directions. Guests came stumbling out of their rooms at the sound of the alarm and immediately stepped into an indoor rain storm.

  Tomato was yelling at Mum and Dad and me.

  ‘Bumpy will drown! Save Bumpy!’

  ‘What’s she going on about?’ Dad shouted above the general noise and the din of the fire bell.

  ‘Bumpy will drown!’

  ‘Who on earth is Bumpy?’ asked Dad.

  ‘My tortoise!’

  ‘What do you mean, your tortoise?’

  ‘Bumpy! He can’t swim! He’ll drown. Nicky told me.’ Tomato was sobbing, adding tears to the puddles that were rapidly joining up into a flood across the dining-room floor. People were splashing through them, trying to get to the exits.

  Mum turned to me. Dad turned to me.

  ‘B
umpy?’ they chorused.

  Oh, well. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do what you have to do. ‘There’s a tortoise in the bath in our room. Tomato brought him back from Letoon.’

  ‘Right, I see,’ said Mum. ‘But what is it doing in the bath?’

  ‘Tomato thought it needed water to swim. I was just telling her only turtles can swim when we had to come down for supper and karaoke and everything.’ I suddenly brightened up as I realized something very important. ‘Anyhow, Bumpy won’t drown because any water will just go down the plug hole.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Mum. ‘I’m so glad the tortoise won’t drown. However, we shall drown if we don’t get out of here. I am soaking wet!’

  Dad jerked a thumb in the right direction. ‘Door’s over there,’ he said. But before we could escape the rain we were suddenly confronted by a purple-faced Mr Grubnose, spluttering with rage.

  ‘I have never in my life come across anything as ridiculous as you,’ he told my dad.

  ‘Oh? You should have seen yourself singing “Rule Britannia”,’ Dad countered, wiping a slick of wet hair away from his eyes.

  Mum jabbed him with her elbow.

  ‘Don’t answer him,’ she advised. ‘You’ll only make yourself as bad as he is.’

  ‘Oh, so I’m bad, am I?’ demanded Mr Grubnose. ‘You’re the one that’s bad. You set off the fire alarm and the sprinklers, you stupid woman.’

  ‘Don’t you dare call my wife a stupid woman,’ shouted Dad.

  ‘I want Bumpy,’ murmured Tomato, watching the adults with worried eyes.

  ‘Oh? So it’s not stupid to set off sprinklers when there isn’t even a fire?’ shouted Mr Grubnose.

  ‘It was an accident,’ I put in.

  Mr Grubnose’s eyes bulged. Little bits of foam were forming at the sides of his mouth.

  ‘Huh! An accident? Don’t be ridiculous. First of all your father tries to stand on his head, as if that isn’t silly enough, then your mother sets off the sprinklers. Your family are hooligans, hooligans and yobs.’